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In the years leading to World War 2, among western innovation Japan brought from Europe was eugenics, the idea that whites were superior to other races and that this was what led to the unparalleled industrial development and military domination of the west through the recent centuries. Japanese thinkers tinkered with it, and some if survives in the form of geodeterminism – many in Korea and Japan are still buying the “blacks and other third world peoples were lazy because they lived in the jungle where food (bananas) was plentiful, at your hand’s reach, but European northerners, specifically British and Germans had to work hard to survive, which led to the Protestant work ethic”. This thought appears unashamedly in popular “educational” quick reads or cartoons, newspaper editorials, and live in the folk lore – 20 to 40 year men share it over drinks as a “wisdom of life that those too politically correct are afraid to tell you”.

Ultimately however, eugenics put the Yellow Race below whites, so it didn’t serve the rapidly militarizing Japanese empire’s agenda. Blood type theory was Eugenics 2.0, a mainstream-friendly transformation. The basic premise goes: “because ABs can’t donate blood to any other group, they are selfish. Os can donate to everyone, so they are more generous.” Then A and B were each assigned the psychotic and hysteric types (not sure where that came from), and boom a plausible explanation of blood type linked to personality was born. Sure, if you bring up Nazi theory int public discourse it’s scandalous and wrong. But fake science that explains personality types, work colleage compatibility, romantic compatibility in a society that was still not quite convinced on what was exactly wrong with Hitler? A lasting, blockbuster ideological success.

It’s not an innocent East Asian eccentricism. When Nazism has his ideological revival in East Asia, we’ll look into its roots and I bet somewhere somehow we are going to find the blood personality type theory among the sources of poison. So keep brewing it on, folks, like it’s some innocent fun curiosity. Hitler will be pleased.